Echoes of resistance: Karnataka and L K Advani's jail stint during Emergency

"I boarded an aeroplane for the first time in November 1975," BJP MLA S Suresh Kumar says with biting sarcasm, recalling the trauma of the Emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975, which suspended civil liberties across the country.

Kumar, then a young political activist, was arrested and subjected to brutal treatment at Bengaluru's High Grounds police station before being shifted to Bengaluru Central Jail, where he spent 15 months.

The "aeroplane" punishment, he explained, involved having one's hands tied behind the back and being hoisted upward-an ordeal causing unbearable pain.

The 21-month Emergency cast a long, dark shadow over democratic institutions nationwide, and Karnataka was no exception. Press censorship, mass arrests under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), and a climate of fear reshaped the political and social landscape of the state.

Among the notable detenus was senior BJP leader and former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, who was imprisoned in Bengaluru during this period. His incarceration, along with that of other national leaders, became a defining chapter in the resistance against authoritarianism.

Suresh Kumar, a former Minister, said the Emergency forged his political identity.

"I was part of the agitation from the time the Emergency was declared," he told PTI.

He recalled participating in a protest at Mysore Bank Circle on June 26, 1975-perhaps the first significant anti-Emergency demonstration in Karnataka. Surprisingly, no arrests were made that day.

Soon after, on July 4, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Jamaat-e-Islami, and 11 other political organisations were banned.

Kumar said Karnataka's Congress government, led by Chief Minister D Devaraj Urs, implemented Emergency directives with near-total obedience to Delhi.

Urs, remembered for land reforms and championing backward classes, oversaw a regime that clamped down harshly on dissent.

Opposition leaders-from the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and Lok Dal to Socialists-were systematically jailed, silenced, or harassed. Journalists, student leaders, and trade unionists were among those detained as Karnataka mirrored the Centre's authoritarian streak.

RSS leader Suresh Naik Ankola, who was jailed alongside Kumar, said L K Advani's imprisonment was one of the most symbolic. Then a rising Bharatiya Jana Sangh figure, Advani was arrested shortly after the Emergency began. Initially detained in Delhi, he was transferred to Bengaluru Central Jail, where he spent much of his jail term.

Advani later said his belief in constitutional democracy strengthened during the emergency when he was jailed. Late veteran socialist leader George Fernandes, known for his deep roots in Karnataka's labour movement, was declared an absconder and later arrested in the infamous Baroda dynamite case.

"The Bengaluru jail became an unlikely incubator of political thought, resilience, and inter-party bonding," Kumar observed, recalling the shared spirit of resistance among the jailed.

Despite heavy suppression, silent forms of protest thrived. Underground pamphlets, clandestine poetry, and hushed intellectual resistance echoed through cities like Bengaluru, Dharwad, Mysuru, and Mangaluru.

Kumar said he was arrested while trying to hand a pamphlet to a visiting foreign delegation to alert them about the state of affairs in India.

According to him, a miscalculation by Indira Gandhi's loyalists led her to call for elections in 1977-a decision that proved fatal for the Congress in the north.

"While the Congress was routed elsewhere, it still found solid support in South India, including Karnataka," Kumar noted.

He concluded by invoking Advani's famous remark about institutional complicity during the Emergency: "When they were asked to bend, they began to crawl."